History

The Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) has evolved over time as its remit has changed and developed in response to the needs of its user community. The following gives a brief history of this evolution and a timeline of significant changes.

The original "CEDA" group followed the merger of two of NERC's data centres - the BADC and NEODC - in 2005, originally being called the Centre for Environmental Data Archival. However, with greater support for users analysing the data too a slight name change from the A in CEDA from Archival to Analysis occured in 2015 to reflect this growing and important role for CEDA.

Prior to 2005 CEDA's history was that as the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC), with "CEDA"'s 20th anniversary being celebrared in 2015. Sam Pepler also put together a presentation about CEDA's evolution during this time which was presented at the 10th International Digital Data Curation conference in 2015.

The BADC was established in 1994 when it superseded a previous facility: the Geophysical Data Facility (GDF). The GDF was previously funded by the then Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) and primarily supported what was then called the "upper atmosphere" remote sensing community (based as it was on studies of the atmosphere between 10 and 400km). However a survey of the NERC community (Carruthers and Thornes, 1995:Development of the Atmospheric Science and Technology Implementation Plan), resulted in an increased remit for the newly renamed BADC to support the entire NERC atmospheric science community. Over the last few years, it has become apparent that the BADC provides services to a wider community than just the atmospheric sciences community (e.g. medicine, biology, waste management, marine sciences, ecology, etc...).

Historical facts about the CEDA are detailed below:

2017:

Kate Winfield rejoins CEDA in August

2016:

Neil Massey joins CEDA in October.

Richard Smith joins CEDA in September.

Kleanthis Tsaousis leaves CEDA in August to take up a new position within JISC.

Kate Winfield leaves CEDA in August to finish her degree.

Marek Ertinger joins CEDA as a year in industry student in July.

2015:

Fatima Chami joins CEDA in December.

Anabelle Guillory leaves CEDA in December to take up a position within ECMWF.

Ruth Petrie joins CEDA in October.

Edward Williamson joins CEDA in September.

Matt Pryor and William Tucker join CEDA in August.

Kate Winfield joins CEDA as a Year In Industry student in July.

CEDA name changes from Centre of Environmental Data Archival to Centre of Environmental Data Analysis.

Spiros Ventouras leaves CEDA in May.

Eduardo da Costa left CEDA in May to take up a position within ECMWF.

Hayley Gray joins CEDA in April.

Kevin Marsh left CEDA to take up a position within ECMWF.

2014:

New CEDA data catalogue service built on MOLES3.4 released, replacing previous catalogue.

New myCEDA services launched to replace old BADC and NEODC systems.

Poppy Townsend joins CEDA.

JASMIN Phase 2 becomes operational.

2013:

2012:

2011:

Bryan Lawrence promoted to NCAS Director of Models and Data at the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Professor of Weather and Climate Computing at the University of Reading, while remaining the Director of CEDA.

2008:

Spiros Ventouras replaces Charles Kilburn as a member of the Science Support group.

Sue Latham leaves the BADC Development team.

Sarah Callaghan joins the BADC.

2007:

On 1 April 2007 the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) merged to form the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

The BADC is authorised by the European Space Agency to archive and distribute data from 4 Envisat instruments (MIPAS, SCIAMACHY, GOMOS, MERIS ) to ESA Category 1 grant holders, in addition to UTLS and CWVC participants.

2004:

The BADC archives and distributes data collected onboard the NERC/MO jointly run FAAM aircraft, which had it's first flight in March, 2004.

The BADC has moved from a system based primarily on a central multiprocessor Compaq-Alpha (tornado) to a distributed system based on multiple linux platforms and network attached storage. Total disk storage is currently about 30 TB. Computer Configuration in May 2004

1850 users registered their details with the BADC to March 2002. 191 queries have been serviced from January 2002 to March 2002.

Work on the Live-Access Server (LAS) facility is under way. this facility will allow users to visualize and subset data via their web browser. This will make possible for users to examine data interactively at BADC without having to download large amounts of data.

With the availability of Met Office data, a surge in BADC users registration is observed (from 630 to 967). Currently, the increase rate is 2.25 new registered users on average per working day (over the 5 past months). 440 substantial user queries serviced this year.

1998:

The NERC Data Policy Handbook, version 2.0:Version 2.0, issued in February 1998 was intended for the entire NERC environmental sciences community, whether in NERC Centres, Surveys and Institutes or in Academia.

Annual Report submitted to NERC Atmospheric Science and Technology Board (ASTB), following which the ASTB "considered it (the BADC) now provided a superb service and great benefit to the community, largely due to effective management".

1996:

The NERC Data Policy Handbook, version 1.0:Version 1.0, issued in January 1996 was intended primarily for NERC staff. It was nevertheless distributed quite widely beyond this readership. The document provides guidance on the implementation of NERC's Data Policies.

The NERC - UKMO Data Agreement:A formal agreement was reached between the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Met Office in which all future requests to the Met Office for data intended for NERC-funded atmospheric research will be coordinated by the BADC. This arrangement avoids duplicate requests for data. A strategy of bulk purchasing is in place, benefiting the wider research community in the long term. The BADC pro-actively organises the bulk acquisition of popular datasets. Examples include ECMWF model analyses and Met Office upper-air and surface data.

Annual Report submitted to NERC Atmospheric Science and Technology Board (ASTB), following which the ASTB "noted the superb productivity of the BADC, in particular the increased growth in the usage of its products"

1991:

High-speed transatlantic link has become available and is being used by RAL mainly for data transfer from the UARS Central Data Handling Facility at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

GDF now serves over 135 users from 22 university departments, 11 other British institutes and 5 overseas laboratories.

1990:

More improvement to the user interface. Data is selected by logging on the dedicated GDF Computer at RAL and compiling a request for data with the help of a menu system. This is designed to be as straightforward and user friendly as possible. Extensive 'help' information has also been compiled for each data set.

1989:

Data now available from the GDF include ground-based and satellite observations from the UK and abroad as well as modelling results from intercomparison and testing measurements. The datasets now include in-situ space plasma data from AMPTE and stratospheric results from SAMS (Stratospheric And Mesospheric Sounder), LIMS and SSU (Stratospheric Sounder Unit) and output from thermospheric and atmospheric models. Solar terrestrial data from the World Data Centre at RAL are also accessible through the GDF environment.

The GDF hardware now include an optical disk "Juke box" capable of providing rapid access to 40Gbyte of data on a dedicated MicroVAX 3900 cluster (running VMS) in addition to the central computing facilities at RAL.

Andy Smith joins the GDF.

1987:

The general interface to the GDF is improved considerably primarily to help and encourage users. By providing cross links to other geophysical datasets at RAL, datasets from different sources can be readily combined. High level command instructions and graph plotting routines are now also available to aid data manipulation.

1985:

Funded by the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), theGeophysical Data Facility (GDF), based at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), is established .

The GDF was "Designed to meet the data requirements of the Atmospheric Sciences and Solar Terrestrial Physics communities".

The GDF main aim is to facilitate data exchange to ease the problem of magnetic tape handling which is becoming a severe burden. During the year, data from the NIMBUS series of satellites and Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorer (AMPTE) have been consolidated into databases on the IBM central computer. These include measured values of temperature of the middle atmosphere and of density, temperature, pressure and energy spectra of electrons and ions in the magnetosphere.

A user at a remote site can access catalogues of the data holdings, select data of interest and transfer these to his own installation via JANET. High speed data links have been installed between RAL and the University of Oxford and University College London as steps towards upgrading JANET to cater for the expected growth in high data rate exchange.

Dr Lesley Gray is the Head of the GDF.Mr Chunkey Lepine is the Facility Manager.

1984:

An Advisory Panel (of representatives from a wide range of interested institutions and universities) is set up to oversee the development of the Geophysical Data Facility (GDF) and a number of pilot studies are being undertaken. The GDF is to be set-up to organise and provide access to data from many Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) Geophysical experiments in the Middle Atmosphere, Climate, Solar Terrestrial and Planetary research.